Serbian royals exhumed ahead of burial in homeland

Prince Pavle, Princess Olga, and Prince Nikola will be reburied with highest state honors in Oplenac, central Serbia, in the crypt of the Church of St. George, where their ancestors have also been laid to rest.

Serbia's public broadcaster RTS reported on Friday that this would take place on October 6.

The three Karađorđević's will lie in state in Belgrade's Cathedral Church of St. Michael the Archangel on October 4 and 5, where liturgies will also be served.

The organizing committee set up to arrange for the transfer of the remains, chaired by Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić, on September 21 unanimously decided to allow for Pavle, Olga and Nikola Karađorđević to be buried in Oplenac.

Prince Pavle Karađorđević, the Yugoslav Kingdom's regent in the 1930s, was declared "a war criminal" and stripped of his civil rights and property by the post-WW2 Yugoslav Communist authorities.

However, this ruling, made in 1945, was overturned by a decision of a Serbian court in December 2011, when the late royal was politically rehabilitated.